Usha Vance, J.D. Vance’s Wife, Entered the Spotlight. It’s an Unfamiliar Role.

Usha Vance, the wife of Senator J.D. Vance, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, introduced herself to the nation on Wednesday night during a prime-time speech at the party’s national convention.

She leaned into the story about her husband’s impoverished upbringing and the laws of opposites attracting, highlighting their different backgrounds.

“When J.D. met me, he approached our differences with curiosity and enthusiasm,” Ms. Vance said. “He wanted to know everything about me, where I came from, what my life had been like.”

The couple met at Yale Law School, where Ms. Vance helped Mr. Vance organize his ideas about social decline in rural white America, the basis of his breakout memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy.” They were married in 2014 in Kentucky and have three children. She is the daughter of Indian immigrants.

Ms. Vance, 38, has shied away from the spotlight during her husband’s quick political ascent, which began during the midterm elections in 2022 when he was elected to the Senate in an open race.

Ms. Vance preceded her husband onstage. During his speech, the last of the night, he formally accepted the party’s nomination to be Donald J. Trump’s running mate.

She cast Mr. Vance, the junior senator from Ohio, as a working-class person who had overcome childhood traumas that she could barely fathom.

“It’s hard to imagine a more powerful example of the American dream, a boy from Middletown, Ohio,” Ms. Vance said, explaining that she came from a very different background and grew up in a middle-class neighborhood of San Diego. As of 2014, she was a registered Democrat, though she is a registered Republican now.

She praised Mr. Vance for embracing her background and customs.

“Although he’s a meat and potatoes kind of guy, he